5 Ways Aquaponics is an Improvement Over Hydroponics

Aquaponics vs Hydroponics

Cost efficient fish feed replaces costly nutrients.

By now you probably already know how much you are spending on nutrient solution each year. Now consider this situation. In our Space Saver Aquaponics system, you use a sixty-gallon tank to grow in seven and a half square feet of space. In this example, that particular space is able to accommodate six to seven indeterminate tomato plants and around ten tilapia fish. The inputs to this sample system are fifteen watts of power for your pump (assuming this is equivalent to hydroponics), water to top off your tank (less than in hydroponics because you are not going to discard and replace your nutrient solution) as well as fish food.

Tilapia grows from its fingerling stage to a plate size of about 1.5 pounds within twelve months.

Tilapia convert fish feed to body weight at an impressive 1.2 to 1.5 pounds of fillet every one pound of feed.

This means that you will require (10 * 1.5 * 1.5) 22.5 pounds of fish feed every year to grow your ten tilapia.

The fish feed will cost you one dollar for every one pound but this would have to depend on the quality of the feed, bulk pricing and shipping costs to name a few.

This only means that you are running a 7.5 square foot grow bed for only twenty-two dollars and fifty cents in twelve months and with this you get a total of ten, fresh and tasty fish at your end of year harvest!

You do not dump out your nutrient solution.

For those of you who do not know, water in a typical hydroponic system requires to be discarded every now and then. The reason is because the chemicals and the salts build up in the water and this can be very toxic to the plants. This can become a problem and it can also be very inconvenient on your part since you will have to carefully consider the location where you will be disposing the wastewater. Instead of dealing with these problems with chemical imbalances, if you opt for an Aquaponic system you are only obtaining a natural nitrogen balance, which is the assurance of an established eco-system. The water in your Aquaponic system is an important component that you need to nurture as part of that balance. You can also read one of our article to know more about the disadvantages of hydroponics system.

The good thing about Aquaponics is the fact that you will never have to replace your water, all you need to do is to top it off whenever it evaporates.

Aquaponics in contrast to hydroponics is more productive.

One university study revealed that after the Aquaponic bio-filter is fully set up a grower would see better and faster results with an Aquaponics system compared to hydroponics. Aquaponics in other words is more productive compared to hydroponics.

Aquaponics is totally organic.

Hydroponics is really about growing in a man-made and sterile environment. Conventional hydroponic systems depend on the meticulous application of costly nutrients that are made from a mixture of trace elements, salts and chemicals. In an Aquaponic system, all you need to do is to establish a natural ecosystem where you can depend on composting red worms and bacteria to convert the solid waste and ammonia from your fish into food for your plants. If you come to think of it the process is really organic. If you apply pesticides to the plants you know that the fish will suffer, right? The same goes with fish if you give it antibiotics or growth hormones you know that the fish will suffer.

Basically, Aquaponics depend on nature and nature rewards growers with less maintenance, lower disease rate and better growth. They say if you cannot beat Mother Nature then might as well join her. This is what Aquaponics did and the yields are fairly impressive this is perhaps one of the reasons why people who patronize Aquaponics are increasing.

The best thing about the Aquaponics system compared to hydroponics is that you don’t have to worry about pythium or root rot for the rest of your life because this disease condition does not exist in Aquaponics systems.

Just in case you weren’t oriented, pythium is all around you, you can find it in the air heck you can even find it in the water and even in a sterile hydroponic environment. Even though Aquaponic systems run with warm water and regularly timed irrigations the preponderance of the bane of hydroponics, which is known as pythium, is very, very rare.

Hydroponics is able to create a sterile environment where disease can become very widespread because of the fact that nothing in there is fighting against it. In a natural Aquaponics eco-system, the system itself provides an immune system against such disease.